5/12/14

Dharma Talk, May 5, 2014: All That Ugliness

It’s Cinco de Mayo today. Hello to you and to those who are listening by
way of the Internet, welcome. Tonight’s class is going to be a bit of a
potpourri in terms of what we’re going to be studying. In terms of working a
lecture today, I was going through a lot of materials then I realized the materials
might be a little bit too tough for you and a little bit more that we can chew
on but we will probably do that anyway.

First, because we have some new faces here, I want to start off with, “What is Meditation?” This year we've been working on
applying theories and fundamentals of the Buddhist practice [in particular Chan]
and from the Mahayana and the Madhyamaca Schools to help us in developing our
meditative skills. But what is it that we do when we sit on the cushion? What
do we seek to accomplish? What are our goals and aspirations? What is our understanding
of what we do when we sit cross-legged? Anybody want to start?

Student: To be present in the moment without any distractions.

Gilbert: Okay, these distractions, what would these distractions be?

Student: Thoughts, preconditions, prejudices, anything at all that takes
you away from a totally transparent moment.

Gilbert: By transparency, what do you mean?

Student: Being totally aware of the deepest thing which you can conceive.

Gilbert: Does one see it as something that can be perceived?

Student: It can be perceived.

Gilbert: And what is perceiving it?

Student: Just an awareness.

Gilbert: The Heart Sutra
says that perception is also empty. So how is this perception being seen in
this emptiness?

Student: You're totally aware of the emptiness but the emptiness is not
nothingness.

Gilbert: Who is this “you?”

Student: “You” is that part of the ocean-mind within you; within is probably
not the right term.

Gilbert: He is correcting himself on-the-fly and I let him do that
because you’ve been a very good sport terms of working with me on this. Why do
you say “within” you?

Student: Because it's a timeless, spaceless awareness so there's no
within or without. It’s just there; the there-ness, the is-ness, that-ness.

Gilbert: Is there a “you” there?

Student: There is something very very deep but it's not an ego “you.”

Gilbert: You’re getting into the bonus rounds, and what do we call that?

Student: Mind.

Gilbert: Are there any other names for it?

Student: Probably (laughs…); yes!

Gilbert: Any come to mind at this point?

Student: The true self.

Gilbert: Or self-nature of mind, we could say. Sometimes it is called
the Tathagatagarbha; the Thusness, the Buddha-womb; all of these are names that
we use conventionally to refer to “what cannot be referred to conventionally.” I
do understand your difficulty in terms of responding in that way but you responded
in a way that reflects that you've been listening and studying, and that's good.
It takes a bit of fearlessness to respond to questions like these, but these
are the questions that as one begins to practice, one does become fearless
about it.

Anybody else want to add something to the meditation? Sentha, do you
agree with his description of what meditation is?

Student: Yes.

Gilbert: And when you meditate, what are you trying to do?

Student: Similar to what Stan said, drop the illusion of restrictions
that separates self from others.

Gilbert: From other sentient beings?

Student: Any other that separates subject from object.

Gilbert: How do you drop these illusions?

Student: Silent Illumination; relaxation and illumination.

Gilbert: In this silence, what is that? What are you referring to?

Student: The stringing together of mental formations that
comes up in mind; putting a string through them - that [aspect] is
silent [or not happening]. To make a bead out of it; to make a Mala out of the
beads that pops up instead of being simply aware of the popping up of those
beads.

Gilbert: If these beads of thought arise in mind, is the mind silent or
not silent?

Student: If there is no second thought, the mind is silent.

Gilbert: Do the thoughts arise haphazardly or do they arise by some form
of design?

Student: Paticca-samuppada – by causes and conditions.

Gilbert: If the thoughts arise by causes and conditions, then is there a
need to silence them?

Student: No, there is no need to silence the thoughts. It is only the
not taking the thought and putting another one on top of it. That is the silent
aspect.

Gilbert: Is this silence, is that effort? Or in this silence, were there
thoughts there or no thoughts there?

Student: Say that again, please!

Gilbert: Is there silence through the practice of not attaching to the
thoughts as they arise, or is the silence inherent in mind?

Student: Silence is inherent in mind but due to the habitual conditioning,
we are so used to stringing things together. At first, it takes effort to
refrain from doing that.

Gilbert: So if we look at it and whatever arose in mind, we know that
due to the inherent nature of the mind, that thought is perfectly in its place,
is it not? So there is not really a silencing of the mind by some ego,
personality, or life-in-being that silences that thought.

Student: Yes. It is like a stone thrown into a lake, it’s going to drop
– like the Silent Illumination song, [the water is so still and the fishes are
yet to appear.] But it is the nature of mind that thoughts appear. So the
fishes are yet to appear but the fishes do appear. The silence is the awareness
that fishes do appear.

Gilbert: In this understanding, what is that called? The Right View. So when we have the Right
View of what mind is, then when we sit to meditate, we know that these thoughts
will naturally arise. There's no sacredness or profaneness in thoughts that
arise. There's no crime in the thoughts arising. One master said that “the
crime is in realizing too late that the thoughts have arisen.”

When we begin to practice meditation, we allow our mind to settle. We
use the awareness of the mind to practice rather than trying to purge the mind
of thoughts, or be frustrated by the scattered thoughts that arise. There are many
many thoughts that arise in any given sitting, but if we sit with the Right View,
then that helps us. This is quite important because that Right View, this
understanding of how mind works, is what enables us to sit and not be attaching
to the thoughts that are arising and creating vexations and discriminations or
any kind of mental formations.

Once we are attaching to a thought bubble, then we create what appears
to be a linear thinking. As I've mentioned many times, as the word “donut” arises,
the next thought is “I like lemon donut;” next one says, “There is a donut shop
close to my house; it’ll still be open by the time I leave here and I’ll pick
up the donut.” All of these are sequential thoughts based on your habit energy.
Now if it was the week before that you bought a dozen donuts and you ate them
all, then the thought would arise that say, “I can't stand donuts; specially
lemon donuts. They make me want to puke. In fact I puked last week.”

So it changes sequentially what comes next based on what you put into
mind. When you understand that the mental formations that arise are just in
this way [what I call essentially a buffet] and you go to some kind of a buffet
and you see all sorts of choices. As you are passing by, some of them don't
attract you - the peas perhaps, the carrots and stuff. But you might see
something quite delectable there that you cannot pass up and so you choose that
one and you can hardly wait to eat that and so you put that on your plate.

Our process is to see naturally that it's not time for us to eat in mind and we’re not going to eat the thoughts. We’re not going to
consume the thoughts; that this is the time where we are practicing to refrain. Perhaps we went to that buffet line a few
times too many. Some of you are thin and don’t have that problem but others maybe
need to back off a little bit. But the idea is that you understand in that
moment what your function is. In that moment, your function is to meditate and
you know what your meditation is.

The reason I went through with these senior students to ask them the questions
is because in this way it helps you to understand what you're doing when you're
meditating. If you just simply sit to meditate and you think that the thoughts
are going to go away soon, you will find that you’re going to be taken away by
the thought bubbles. But if you sit there and know and have faith [that those
thoughts will begin to lose their effectiveness against you simply by the fact
that you are not giving them any mind energy], then those thoughts will fade
away and they will come less frequently and less powerfully.

Now if you have something, for instance, you have to get the job out at work,
or that you may not have work tomorrow, or you have a fight with somebody;
those things are going to come up very strong in mind. You may want to try to repel
them but you can’t. The more effort you take to try to repel the thought, the
more the thought comes up. It doesn't matter whether it's negative or positive
power that you give that thought; that thought, whether it's negative or
positive, will produce a negative thought or positive thoughts depending on
what you produce there.

In terms of looking at it, what Chan does is it looks at it and says “All
of these is “zero” - all of these is an illusion; it's impermanent; it’s
transient.” It looks at it in a way where it clearly sees that transientness of
it to the thoughts. If you don't believe me, if you're able to quiet the mind
and just simply sit without putting anything on your thought plate, you will
find that those thoughts will dissipate very quickly and they will go away. The
stronger ones, they will keep coming back like some you know, Walking Dead
thoughts that just keeps coming back; no matter how much you try to push it away,
it comes back. “I’m here again; I’m here again.” It is because you gave it a lot
of energy during the day, or perhaps during the month, or whatever it is during
your lifetime. Maybe it is not even let's say a thought, per se of some object,
but an emotion: impatience, anger or hatred. Those thoughts will come up and
it's looking for a dancing partner. It is looking for something to connect to
but nevertheless, that represents the potentiality of thought through its emotion.

What we do when we meditate is we become adept at recognizing not only
the appearances of thought that are mirrored in the mind that we can see. For
instance, the donut; we can see it clearly. We've got a shot at that. But that
attachment to craving, maybe we miss that. So if the donut doesn't do it, maybe
a piece of Lemon Meringue Pie will replace it or something else. We don't see
that these occurrences are naturally happening in the mind and we don't have to
cast them out. All we do is simply get to the point of what Sentha, you said one
half of it?

Student: Illuminating it.

Gilbert: Illuminating it. You were talking about the idea of the silent
part and this idea of illuminating it. You want to say something about what
illumination is?

Student: Illumination is to simply be aware. It is knowing that first
bead that prevents you from stacking on the beads together and maybe a string
of beads with it. Silence is not doing the stringing. Illumination is being
aware that the first bead has arisen so there is no need to stack on another
bead to it.

Gilbert: In our practice, what is silence associated with?

Student: Are you talking about how using the method helps us?

Gilbert: Yes, but in silence, the silence belongs to the noumenon; it
belongs to the absolute truth of mind, the quietness. The illumination side
then corresponds with what?

Student: Phenomena.

Gilbert: Phenomena. So in the illumination, what we're doing is we're
aware that there's this phenomena that is arising in mind. When we say “arise
in mind,” it could be a car horn; it could be a sensation in the body; it could
be a dog barking; it could be a thought of something that happened today, or
thought that might happen tomorrow. All these things, they are phenomenal. And
when we recognize that they have no permanency to them, then it helps us break
through. Probably the hardest part for us, in terms of looking at things, is the
emotional side. So in your life, do you have a particular emotion that arises
more than others, anybody?

Student: Anxiety.

Gilbert: Anxiety, okay so you have anxiety. So when you sit to meditate,
that anxiety is going to come up and as we were talking last week in Hanshan’s treatise
on the ESSENTIALS OF PRACTICE AND ENLIGHTENMENT FOR BEGINNERS, he
says that when you're sitting well, just at that moment that anxiety is going
to be amplified because it's the last bit that’s going to be coming up. All the
other stuff will start to drop off but that anxiety has a greater let's say,
mind energy rating so it’s going to pop up. So if you understand that that
anxiety has nothing to do with you, that it’s just simply something you've been
keeping tossing up and tossing up in the mind, you are going to be able to
break through that and everything that connected with that anxiety will fall
off.

Master Sheng Yen equated that to someone who has a lot of leeches on his
body when you’re in a swamp. He said that if you try to pull them off
individually, then the head still stays in there and you will not get anywhere
with it. But if you pour salt all over your body, then the leeches will naturally
come off. Why is that? Why would the leeches come off?

Student: (kind of inaudible…) With salt is like sucking the water out of
its cells.

Gilbert: So when that happens what you do is you create an environment
that does not sustain their life, so naturally they'll want to move away from that.

When you meditate, what you are doing is you're creating a wholesome
environment for meditation. In a wholesome environment for meditation, the
vexations that you have will naturally fall off; not one at a time, but all of
them. They will little by little fall off. Some of them maybe stronger, maybe
more mature, but what you are doing in your meditation is you’re creating an unwholesome
environment for the fostering of vexations, of greed, of hatred, of ignorance
by illuminating the mind. Anybody else have any kind of emotions that come up regularly?

Student: Restlessness.

Gilbert: Restlessness. Okay, restlessness is one like anxiety; it makes it
a little bit difficult to meditate sometimes. In restlessness, it's like you
can't sit to meditate. Why, because “I got to do this; got to do that; I gotta,
gotta, gotta, gotta! What’s this; what’s that?” You don't feel comfortable. But
if you reverse it and create the proper environment and you see it in the right
way, then you create [as I indicated last week] a component of sublimeness and
being sublime when you sit to meditate. So when you sit sublime, it makes you
feel very very comfortable.

It was
funny because I was in Ohio giving a retreat and I said the word “sublime.” I
couldn’t remember the Chinese word. There’s a lot of Chinese there and I knew
that they didn’t know what sublime meant. Finally I said, “Miow” and they go,
“Miow?” Now I’m going, “Mi-ow?” Because they didn’t understand my Chinese so
they all go “Mi-ow?” So it sounded like that commercial for the cat. (laughs…)
So it was funny. (In
Chinese, the characters [in the word] have to be pronounced perfectly or it’s
going to sound like something else.)Chinese Alphabet - Learning the Chinese alphabet is very important because its
structure is used in every day conversation. Without it, you will not be able
to say words properly even if you know how to write those words. The better you
pronounce a letter in a word, the more understood you will be in speaking the
Chinese language.

It's this
sublime feeling of not wanting anything; not lacking anything; very comfortable;
just this sublimeness when we sit to meditate. When we use that in our meditative
practice, your anxiety is going to go away because you have this sublimeness that
overcomes that. You will see clearly that in that moment, there's nothing to be
anxious about. There's no reason to have this restlessness to you. Anybody else
has anything that they want to say; that they might have some vexations?

Student:
Grief.

Gilbert:
Good grief or bad grief? Sorry, just…

Student:
I don't know that there is good grief or bad grief. I guess grief is good
because it’s there and I’m not trying to push it away.

Gilbert:
Is it grief from someone that you lost?

Student:
Yes, it is just a number of things for the last three months. Part of it is a
review of my childhood and people that I knew when I was in my twenties [the
first time that I left home] and by finding in the obituary of one person;
leaving something on the line. Someone from that period of time that I
mentioned contacted me and in that ten minute of phone conversation, I caught
up forty years of his life that led to another. So that brought the review of
forty years ago.

Gilbert:
It’s a natural emotion and it’s the emotion that probably strikes us the
hardest because as we begin to practice, we see that if we hold on to anything,
it'll cause us suffering. Anything that we hold on to is in that way. When we
try to separate ourselves from it, it is not so easy. But that’s why they call us
practitioners. It's a natural emotion that in part is imprinted within our own
human sentient thoughts and emotions that comes up. It can be amplified for any
particular purposes or reasons but you have to be mindful that these things are
coming up. Anything that causes you grief in that way it becomes very very
difficult for you to practice.

Once
somebody came to Master Sheng Yen and said, “I really feel so sad for the world
because so many things are happening there and so many problems.” What do you think;
do you think that this is a very good attitude?

Student:
It would seem that this person is not experiencing the suchness of life - life
as it is. They are thinking as life as it ought to be. That difference is
causing them discomfort.

Gilbert:
It’s an interesting thing because when the person told Master Sheng Yen this,
he said that this is not true compassion. This is just suffering. This is attaching
to those things. The idea of the true compassion is just simply doing the
things that need to be done in any given moment for the benefit of humanity and
for the benefit of all sentient beings; that we do things
without thought.

In
this way, we’re not thinking about it from the viewpoint of shedding a tear as
much as understanding that there is this suffering and that we know what the
cause of suffering is. And you pretty much know where I’m going with this; the
beginning to the Four Noble
Truths. But
we see it from the viewpoint of what Mahayana, the higher vehicle practitioner,
is that we look at everything in this way. So we see that and it clarifies mind
and it helps us and it brings us down to a very subtle point where we can
maintain this sublimeness when we meditate. And when we get up off of our
cushion, we still have the sublimeness, but the sublimeness enables us to truly
illuminate the mind. When the mind is illuminated, it is aware of the causes
that are bringing forth the conditions that are surrounding the environment. In
this way, that type of a practice enables us to settle down on the cushion. That
type of practice and awareness is called what, Rick?

Student:
Sorry, the mind left the room for about 10 seconds and missed the question.

Gilbert:
Can anybody help him?

Student:
Wisdom.

Gilbert:
Wisdom, the Prajnaparamita. It’s this very high wisdom that we see. When we
practice Chan, we’re sitting to meditate with wisdom. We are using our
awareness to reflect something very important in terms of looking at things; that
we understand the nature of things. Does anybody know what that is?

Student:
Paticca-samuppada- causes and conditions never fail. This Paticca-samuppada is the Buddha-mind; it is
your Self-nature or your True Nature - it is what is there. It's a very important component
of our practice to know that causes and conditions never fail. Those thoughts that
are appearing; the anxiety you feel; the restlessness you feel; the grief;
they're all naturally occurring naturally because you put them there.

So if
you're there and you're lying on your bed like as a little kid, [I hate to brings
this up because some of you might have been traumatized by this] and you think the
Bogey Man is underneath the bed. You created that in your mind so you never
want to look underneath the bed to see if he is really there. You created all
that in your mind. What was the cure? You understand that you created that in
your mind. So when you understand that, you actually are the Bogey Man because
you created that; you put it together. Nobody put them underneath the bed but you.
And you see the whole world in this way and then later on, you see the world in
terms of the way that it's very illusory.

I
think I recently said this but this example is still a good example of an elderly
gentleman in Master Sheng Yen's class. He told him, “Shifu, I hope I pass away
before you.”

And
Shifu said, “Why is that?”

He
said, “If you passed away before me, I will be very, very sad.”

When
he told him that, Shifu, my Master said, “If you passed away before me, I shall
not miss you!”

That is
wisdom. It's wisdom because that's the way it is - there's a time for
everything. But as we look at it, we know that things are all illusory. If we
do not see things in this way, it's very difficult for us to work. That does
not mean that if somebody very close to you passed away you will not feel grief;
of course you will. But we look at things as they really are. We see the things
in terms of using wisdom to deal with the world.

I had
one cousin whose son was killed in an act of violence and she was grieving
quite a bit. When they told me she was grieving, I called her up and she was
crying, crying, crying. She said, “People tell me to stop crying.” And I go,
“Why is that? Why did they tell you to stop crying? It's natural for a mother
to grieve for her son and nobody can tell you how much tears you should shed. There's
no book that says “the grieving period is this.” If it’s still in your heart,
let it be there. Just let it flow.” And that's all she needed to hear. She
needed to hear that that was natural. And soon after that, she put that down;
she put down her grieving.

It is
in the manner in which we look at things and how we illuminate the environment
and we assist people around us via that illumination so that the people benefit
by our way of looking at the world; not from the viewpoint that there is an
individual and this problem and that problem, but that everything is naturally
connected. We understand that and we accept the responsibility for the things
that happen around us. How many of you in your life have refused to accept the
possibility for something that you knew that you were responsible or at fault
for, raise your hands? Most of you raised your hands; the rest of you lied.
(laughs…) I mean that's the way we are; we don't want to accept the responsibility!
But what Chan does is it throws up this mirror to reflect everything. And in that
reflection, by using the practice, we turn the mind's eye inward. And we see these
reflections on the wall of the mind and we understand why those things are
appearing.

It's a
very interesting thing because I'm preparing for a lecture in Michigan. I've
been talking to one of my friends about different subjects and one of my topics
for the University of Michigan is meditation and looking at the idea of what's
called Plato’s Wall in which the shadows dance upon. Anybody ever heard of Plato’s
Wall? Yes? It's a concept of Plato that people are chained to the inside of the
cave. They are looking at the wall of the cave and behind them there's a fire.
There are people walking in front of the fire and casting shadows on the wall.
The shadows that are cast on the wall, they take them to be real because they don't
know anything else. It gets much deeper than that in terms of how it goes.

But I wanted
to emphasize the viewpoint that Plato was looking at it and saying that this is
apparent reality; the real reality was the people that were causing the shadows
who were walking behind them. But that wasn’t the case because the most important
part is; there was a wall there that the shadows were projected
on. There
was a wall there [if they could turn around] that the images of the people walking
in front of the fire were projected on. That is the noumenon side of the mind;
the part of the mind that’s your self-nature, which doesn't change. It's there;
it is what you use to think. Not the thoughts that arise but that which is mind itself
- in which all of these transient thoughts and feelings, emotions, and discrimination
are all projected on. By doing that and when we see things in this way, we become
much clearer, because we miss that wall. We miss the fact that there’s something
there, but it shouldn't be in this way.

We have
to see that clearly. So when we sit to meditate, what we do is we allow the thought to reflect upon the mind’s wall. The difference is that we
are aware that those thoughts are there; they arose; that they are not us. But we
are not thinking that those thoughts are arising in accordance with causes and conditions.
All of the thoughts that you have of those thoughts are also just transitory -
constantly changing. When one sees how the mind works in this way when we sit
to meditate, we allow all those thoughts to be projected on the wall of the mind
and not letting them to have any kind of an influential over us. We see them
for what they are.

When we
see that, then when we get up off our cushion, that's when the real test of our
practice begins because sitting on the cushion is just simply the practice field. It’s a practice field for
us to be able to settle the mind and we settle it in a very subtle and sublime
way. Very easy; some equate it to catching a feather on a fan. You have a
Chinese fan and you have a feather, instead of trying to chase the feather, we
just simply let the feather come to the fan. In that way, we let the mind
settle naturally. The mind naturally is still; even in movement, it is
still. In
my talking to you, it's still.

We
don't see things in that way though. We see things in a different way. If this
was the first class I was giving for a Dharma lecture, I might be thinking,
“OMG! OMG! What am I doing; what am I going to say next? They're not smiling!”
But it's not that way. One just simply, as you sit to meditate, you give your
body to the cushion. I give my lecture to my mouth – just let it move up and down
and everything just naturally flows from there without the necessity of filtering
it through “Gilbert” to see if “he” is doing okay or not.

So in
whatever we do, we burn ourselves up in the present moment. When we sit to
meditate, we burn up the self - no restlessness, no anxiety, no grief, no impatience,
or whatever it is. All these things are seen just as they arise. So as we’re
seeing thoughts arising of anxiety, now when you have anxiety, is it tied to a particular
thought or is it just like that kind of squeeze emotion that moves around?

Student:
(inaudible)

Gilbert:
Yes, is it just something that's looking for something to attach to? That's the
worst because it's like looking for that anxiety. So if you understand that and
you understand that emotion is arising, by illuminating the mind to see that
emotion, that emotion will have no place to go. It's kind of like a mouse; when
you turn on the lights in the kitchen, you know inevitably they’re going to
head under the refrigerator. I don’t know why but they seem to always head
under the refrigerator – Poof!!! It's gone! But you saw it. That’s really
important that you saw the mouse. That's a critical thing because that's what
the practice is; that you now recognize that that emotion arose in the mind.

And
likewise with what you have with your restlessness. It's the same way. When
you're sitting and you’re restless, the mind attaches to many different things
of restlessness. It could be restlessness of some project you have to do, or
restlessness of your relationship, restlessness of what your dog is doing, or
who knows what. In that way when you understand that and you illuminate the
mind, you will begin illuminate all of these emotions that are tied up to them
too. That’s really what we're doing when we’re sitting in meditation, is we’re holding the method in a manner which it enables us to be quieted and
become aware of thoughts coming up. That is the illumination.

The silent
aspect of it is bringing the mind to the point where the ego is not there –
keeping it on the method. As we keep on the method, then that requires
concentration. You have to really practice hard to keep that concentration. Generally,
the average concentration lasts what, like ten seconds; a minute? With
experienced practitioners, they are pretty honest about that, but you reel it back
in. You come back over and you work it again and you go
back to your method.You have to keep doing that.

I used
to equate the practice to using the rabbit ear antennas on TV like in the old
days. I used to have a bad TV with a bad rabbit ear antenna that kind of slid back
forth and down. So if you really wanted to see a program, you have to be ready
to move that antenna at any point to try to get the signal back in. That's what
you're doing with your method; is that you’re adjusting that antenna to stay
with the method, and stay with the method. You know you're on the station when
you see a picture.

But
when you’re not confused, you're seeing snow; all of this interference on the
TV, and you're confusing it to be real. You’re confusing it to be something
that’s there but it's just you walking on the beach somewhere, or at work
slaving away. That’s even worse, or you were fighting for the hundredth time
with whoever you were fighting with. That’s also worse. So being aware of all
these things you are no longer confused. Why, because the mind illuminates
what's happening within it at that moment. It does not confuse the
consciousness with mind itself. Consciousness arises in mind; mind is always there.
Any questions?

Student:
(inaudible)

Gilbert:
Not to worry; little by little what happens is that it will become more
familiar to you. In the beginning, the words, the concepts or the ideas, it's
natural for you to feel the way you are. The thing is that whether you have an
affinity with this or not is whether you go “I really want to understand what
he’s saying. It sounds good but I don't quite understand it.” It's okay. That's
all right. Sometimes people who are listening will go “Forget it!” and they’re
gone because they do not have an affinity with it. And I can’t give anyone that
affinity.

But in
terms of looking at it, you could boil it down to the saying that “Sages [wise
people] return consciousness to mind; fools turn mind into consciousness.” They
have all of these thoughts arising in mind and they take this consciousness to
be mind. It can't be because it's transitory - constantly changing. There's no
place where they can build a foundation for that to establish that that is mind.
There are very high-level philosophical discussions that we can go through. For
instance, from the Madhyamaca School
and Nagarjuna that refute everything: from time and space, anything that comes
up they’ll refute it in a very adept way. This method of doing that, you could
say is for intellectuals but when you sit to meditate, you're doing the same
thing; you’re illuminating the mind. It isn't that one looks at mind and go, “Oh,
the mind is illuminated!” “How do you know?” “Because I'm glowing and I'm
shooting out rays all over the place so I must be illuminated.” No, you’re
probably on fire. (laughs) But the thing is that you're confused about it. When
you're not confused, that’s wisdom; very deep wisdom to know how things work.

So for
instance, if you wanted to become a computer technician, what would be the
first thing that you have to do? Yes, you learn how it works right? So our
practice is for one to learn how mind works. If somebody just simply tells you “go
sit and meditate,” you can meditate until hell freezes over and not get anywhere.
You might be very good at crossing your legs but you're not going to be able to
pierce through simply because of the fact that you don't have the Right View in
terms of how mind works.

Same thing
if you were an auto mechanic and don’t know how a car works. “Let me fix your
car.” “What’s wrong with it?” “I don’t know; it makes this sound.” And that’s
all you know. Why, because you never studied Auto Mechanics. There's no way
you're going to be able to fix it. Chan is this method of studying it so that you
can see what's there in the mind. Now like in our practice, what you find out
when you start looking at the computer, you know that the mainframe itself is
the computer, and then you run software but that software is constantly changing.
When you see that, you can say that whatever is reflected on the screen is from
the software but the computer enables it to appear. And the other part is that “you”
as an individual is the viral program. You are causing the computer to have a
virus - “you.” And “you” mess up the whole process and the whole thing.

Chan
is a manner in which screens all the programs in the computer to discover the
malfunction and it eliminates those malfunctions. It doesn't mean that you disappear;
it just simply means that the vexations, greed, hatred, ignorance, they begin
to recede and hopefully disappear simply by knowing how it works. Is that a
little easier?

Student:
What about impatience and I heard someone talk about ego. I think that my ego
definitely has to be there because somebody may cut me off and I might find
myself getting upset and that impatience. What is that that makes me feel that
way? I don’t like that because it projects negative energy, and if she’s in the
car with me, she sees that negative energy. I need to fall out of the extreme
and learn to relax.

Gilbert:
You're in the right place. You're in the right place because you've already
began to look at that idea of the self and say “I recognize that and I don't
really like that.” That sometimes equate to the AA Program; the 12 step program
of Alcoholics Anonymous saying that you first have to recognize that there's
some kind of a problem, and that it’s you. That's good because most people that
have problems and most people, let’s say with a strong ego, don't ever
recognize that. So for you to recognize that and say “I want to work on this,”
it's good.

So if
you’re coming with such a strong ego, you'll have a lot to reflect on as it's
coming up in the mind, and all you have to do is let it go. As soon as it comes
up and you go, “This is baloney!” That is ego; where did that come from? And you
just let it go and you see let's say some of that ugly tendencies that we have.
We all have that; it all depends on who the person is. They have things maybe impatience,
or ego, or hatred you know. Some people they can get angry so quickly. Other
people, they're lazy – “I’ll get to it tomorrow.” They're lazy to such point that
they don't help people around them. They lack the ability to see that they're
part of the environment.

But
when we practice Chan, what we do is we illuminate the environment as well. The
environment is mind as well. And by illuminating it, then we go “What do I do
to fit in here and to make this a better scene?” You don’t underplay your part
or overplay your part. You’re just where you should be, saying the things you
should be, rather than making a mess out of it like a skunk stinking up the
room. A lot of people can do that and they don't even realize what they do
that, and more importantly, some of them don't even care that they do that, “I
don’t care; I can say whatever I want to say.” It doesn’t matter to them. Recently
a basketball team owner found out that he can't do that. When all that ugliness
comes out, it’s not good.

Now
when you sit to meditate, all that ugliness is going to come out. Whatever it
is, it’s going to come out and you’re going to see it. When I say ugly, I don't
mean it the way like it always has to be that way. It could be something that
we overdo. I always bring up donuts because it’s a safe one; because if
somebody there is a smoker or alcoholic or whatever, then they might take offense.
But if donut people take offense, that person would be me. (laughs…)

So the
idea of clinging to something, you see it. It arises in your mind and you see
it very clearly. So you work on that; it gives you something to work on. You
don't have to push it out of the mind. You just simply have to illuminate it -
to realize that a moment ago, it wasn’t there; a moment ago, that anxiety wasn’t
there. That will work and when you see things and you put things in the proper
perspective, it's okay to grieve; it's okay to have the certain feelings; it’s
okay have feelings for your child. But if you are extremely overprotective of
the child, you’ll harm the child. We do everything in the Middle Way - in a way
just whatever needs to be there. Any other questions? We will take a break. We ran
a little bit over but after this, we will do a little bit of meditation; we’ll
teach you a little bit about meditation.